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Foxygen performs on the edge of combustion

I mention this only because strange was the order of the night: this was a Foxygen concert, after all. The two young neo-hippies that make up the band hail from Los Angeles are notorious for smashing together an amalgamation of music influences—The Velvet Underground, the Stones, Dylan, Bowie, you name it—into a stunning shape of some modern songs with enough vitality to flourish in spite of their influences.

Not in an unappealing way. "Strange" seemed to be a target he was aiming for, and if not strange, then maybe it was "off-beat," or "unique" or "marketably different." He and his on-stage partner hailed from Australia; he with his shoulder-length hair straightened and pushed from his face, his partner with possibly the manliest-looking ponytail I've ever seen. He'd play beats, synth-y 80s vibes, and sing-talk over them in a almost hypnotically monotonous voice. He would awkwardly jig and kick around the stage, with a facial expression that seemed as if he were just as surprised at what he was doing as those watching were. Every so often, his partner would step to the mic to provide a little saxophone solo, then he would sit back down, look at his cigarette and seem bored. It was, in a word, fairly strange.

I mention this only because strange was the order of the night: this was a Foxygen concert, after all. The two young neo-hippies that make up the band hail from Los Angeles are notorious for smashing together an amalgamation of music influences—The Velvet Underground, the Stones, Dylan, Bowie, you name it—into a stunning shape of some modern songs with enough vitality to flourish in spite of their influences. This current tour was being billed as their farewell tour, a namesake that appeared on the concert bill only and was given no attention otherwise. They gave the sense that "farewell" meant something a little different to them than it did to everybody else.

When Foxygen took the stage at the historic 40 Watt Club. A pentagram hung up behind the drum, set as an ode to rock n roll's always curious affiliations to the satanic and the sinful, meshed with the carnival music soundtrack–repeating and swirling around the venue like a haunted merry-go-round. It felt more like waiting in queue for a theme park ride than it did a rock show, but it made sense for what was about to occur: one of the most theatrically driven performances seen this side of the Yeezus tour.

The band comes out with chorus girls, three of them, who spent the show singing harmonies, dancing and playing into the increasing madness. Sam France, lead singer and one of the two founding members of the band, comes out in a glam-rock version of a business suit, his face covered in white make up that will slowly sweat off and distort as he dances and seizes on stage. It posits him as an intriguing mix between McJagger, Bowie and Heath Ledger's Joker–maniacal facial expressions included.

The show is a fever-pitch of absurd behavior and stage play-theatrics. There's costume changes, trippy intermissions, full bottles of Jack consumed on stage, a plastic sword fight interlude between most of the band, a bizzaro mirror of a late night talk show, with France whipping out daily news punch lines off scraps of paper with increasingly worrying intensity, all the while as the music builds, builds, builds.

France himself emotes and thrashes like no other man I've seen on stage—his eyes nearly roll back white in the furious rampage of "We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic," but he's tender and broken as can be during the falsettos of "Coulda Been My Love." If the band truly is breaking up after these final few shows, France's performance is a good argument for why—you can't imagine him living much longer playing shows like this every night. It's only when he and Jonathan Rado quiet down sometime mid-set, recollecting playing with one another for the first time in one of their childhood garages, reminiscing on the release of the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots that year, that you remember how young they really are. Only 25, Foxygen still has enough youthful energy and abandon to probably crash and burn through several bands before they eventually settle themselves down.

Sometimes the show feels like it's about to fall apart at the seams half-way through, and it becomes hard to tell whether the looks of worry or shock from the chorus girls is genuine or part of the performance. The story of the band's 2013 on-stage meltdown at SXSW is well circulated, after all, and who knows when that kind of behavior could strike again?

The insanity works though: the crowd is moving, active, dancing, jumping like how you often see in music videos but rarely in real life. The band keeps their s***t together long enough to come out for an encore of two songs—neither of which are the band's latest big single, "How Can You Really?," which was left unperformed (also missing: recent single "Cosmic Vibrations," and break-out hit "San Francisco.")After the show, some sweat-happy kids approach the cleaning crew and ask for a set list from the stage, the response: "There isn't one. I think they were making it all up as they went along."

The night then ends in mystery: did they leave their big hit out as some screw-the-system countercultural move or were they just so zoinked out of their minds that they forgot? The world may never know. If the band is really breaking up, maybe its for the best—the band's live show is one of the best I've ever seen, but made of such a mix of volatile chemicals that it seems only a matter of time before it all self-combusts.